Falcon 9

These photos show the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket June 17 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, carrying a GPS navigation satellite into orbit for the U.S. Space Force. Once its job was complete, the rocket’s first stage booster returned to a landing on a SpaceX drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX launched a national security payload for the U.S. military Thursday for the first time using a previously-flown Falcon 9 rocket booster. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station with a GPS navigation satellite at 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 GMT).

Following years of planning, a GPS navigation satellite built by Lockheed Martin will be the first operational U.S. military payload to ride a reused SpaceX booster on a launch from Florida Thursday, laying the groundwork for future national security missions to save money by incorporating recycled rocket parts.

A Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral early Sunday with a high-power digital radio satellite for SiriusXM, marking SpaceX’s 18th Falcon 9 flight since Jan. 1, but just the third dedicated to external commercial customers in a year dominated by missions building out the company’s own Starlink internet network.

SiriusXM will get a new radio broadcasting satellite with a launch scheduled early Sunday from Cape Canaveral aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, following the failure of an identical spacecraft after a launch last December.

SpaceX launched a powerful radio broadcasting satellite for SiriusXM early Sunday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 12:26 a.m. EDT (0426 GMT) to haul the roughly 7.5-ton spacecraft into a geostationary transfer orbit.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will go from Cape Canaveral to low Earth orbit in less than 10 minutes Thursday with a Dragon capsule heading for the International Space Station carrying more than 7,300 pounds of supplies and experiments.

SpaceX ignited a Falcon 9 rocket for a 10-second test-firing early Thursday on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, clearing a pre-flight check before a mission set to blast off just after midnight Sunday with the SXM 8 radio broadcasting satellite for SiriusXM.